


Not Who I Would Have Chosen

by flipflop_diva



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreams, F/F, First time with a woman, Kissing, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-16 12:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13054269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: Eleanor's soulmate is Tahani. But there's one big problem with that.





	Not Who I Would Have Chosen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).



> Written for Yuletide 2017. Takes place during reset No. 218.

When she was alive, Eleanor used to think about death all the time. Occasionally her own death, most of the time other people’s deaths. Like her roommate’s and her boss’ and that guy at the store who was always trying to ask her for money every time she came out with her groceries. 

She would always imagine the satisfaction she would feel knowing they were in the bad place, being tortured for infinity in the pits of eternal fire. She sometimes imagined demons the same color as the fire, with their horns and their pitchforks, and she imagined the sweet, sweet sound of their screams, and sometime she wished she would be there to see it.

Though who was she kidding? Of course she would be there to see it. But it would be worth it. Very, very worth it.

For her own death, she just liked to fantasize about how it might come. For curiosity sake and all that. Maybe her car slipping off a bridge. Or that horrid guy she once slept with and then left naked on the side of the road (long story) coming back to poison her in her sleep. 

She liked that one best, to be honest. Sleeping through the transition always seemed like the way to go.

But never in any of these imaginings — or really, never in any of the movies or television specials she had seen on death and the afterlife — had she ever considered the possibility that 1) she would accidentally wind up in the good place and 2) that some crazy guy would tell her that her soulmate was a woman — a stunningly beautiful woman who had an ego the size of the entire world and who thought she was the best thing to ever walk the streets of heaven.

It was exhausting and, in a weird way that alive Eleanor also wouldn’t have ever imagined, a bit exhilarating. 

She had never been with a woman. Well, not unless you counted the drunken kiss with her roommate (yeah, the one that she hated and imagined a horrible death for) or the one with her boyfriend’s sister after they split a bottle of tequila and ended up together on the bathroom floor singing a really bad karaoke version of hits that hadn’t been popular in thirty years. But since Eleanor barely remembered anything of either of those night — “I’m gunna kiss you now!” she somehow remembered herself slurring to the boyfriend’s sister — she was pretty sure neither counted. Plus, it was nothing but some kisses. And maybe some tongue. But nothing beyond that. 

Nothing like the dreams she kept having — yeah, those ones. Where she kept waking up in the middle of the night, her face and body flushed and a heat in her belly and an ache between her legs more intense than she had ever felt before when she was alive.

In them she and Tahani were … well, they were pretty much doing everything. All over their small, clown-covered house. Sometimes even against the clown-covered wall.

Each time it happened, Eleanor would hurry into the bathroom to take a cold shower, recounting to herself every man she had ever been with — and there had been a lot. She had not been shy — hoping to drive away the dreams. But yet they came. First weekly but then daily.

Every forking night.

“Are you avoiding me?” Tahani said to her one morning, after a night featuring a particularly intense dream that had Eleanor showering for almost an hour to no avail. Instead she had gone back to bed, bit down on her pillow and got herself off to the thought of going down on Tahani.

“What? Nooooo!” Eleanor lied, because obviously she was avoiding her. And obviously Tahani knew she was avoiding her. At that moment, with the way Tahani was looking at her, Eleanor would have believed that Tahani even knew about the dreams she was having.

“Are you sure?” Tahani asked. “Because it quite feels that way.”

“Definitely not,” Eleanor said. “Just having …. some trouble adjusting. To this place.”

“Ah, yes,” Tahani said, nodding. “I do understand that. It is quite difficult sometimes to remember we are no longer alive, is it not? I get an urge to escape into the world and attend some fabulous parties, but yet, we are stuck her.” She wrinkled her nose. “In this house, which is much too small to hold the parties that I long to plan.” She sighed forlornly. “I sometimes do not know what do with myself.”

“Kiss me,” Eleanor said.

Tahani stared. Eleanor clapped a hand over her mouth. Where the fork had that come from?

“Excuse me,” Tahani said. Eleanor couldn’t tell if she looked disgusted or curious or what.

“I, just, urmmm.” She struggled for words.

“Well, we are soulmates,” Tahani said, shrugging. “I did think that perhaps we would wait until we grew closer, to make it more special, but maybe this would bridge that gap faster.”

“Bridge what gap?” Eleanor wanted to know.

“To intimacy,” Tahani clarified. “Perhaps this kissing would bring us closer.”

“You want us to.” Eleanor gestured. “You know …”

“Oh!” Tahani said, suddenly seeing Eleanor’s face, which must have look horrified because Tahani looked a bit abashed. “I am sorry for presuming so much.”

“No,” Eleanor said. “It’s just … ummm … you see, in my alive life, I ummm …”

“Oh!” Tahani’s face had now lit up in understanding. “You have not been with a woman before!”

“Gotcha,” Eleanor grinned.

“Perhaps I can help,” Tahani said. “I have been with many. Models, a couple actresses, although one was quite snotty and I must have been drinking too much to allow myself to be with her when I knew she would pretend I didn’t exist the next morning, but alas …”

“Okay,” Eleanor interrupted. “The less details the better.”

“Hmmm.” Tahani looked perplexed but then she nodded. “Yes, I see,” she said. “We have nothing to worry about here, so there is no reason to share the past details of all our former partners. We can just get to it.”

“Yeah, I guess we can.”

“Nothing stopping us then.”

“Nothing at all.”

They looked at each other. Eleanor thought about making a move — her brain wanted her to make a forking move — but her body was frozen. Tahani seemed to be too. She stood still, like a statue.

“Nothing stopping us,” Tahani repeated lowly, and it was like a trigger. Eleanor’s body was suddenly on overdrive, her legs moving her across the room, her arms wrapping around the other woman, her lips on Tahani’s. So soft, so tender … so forking sweet.

And oh, yes, Eleanor thought, just as she deepened the kiss and Tahani’s fingers reached under her shirt, there really was nothing stopping them.


End file.
